Boxes And Arrows : The Design Behind the Design

Why do we keep arguing over the definition of “information architecture,” broad, narrow, big, little, West Coast, Polar Bear, or other? Maybe it’s because we’re a profession that, among other things, focuses on classification and categorization. But, arguably, it means “information architect” is a poor fit for what people are really doing.

When you look at the working world, you find that people go by many titles—information architect is just one—and those titles get defined in completely different ways.

This confusion over titles and industry jargon is nothing new. During the CD-ROM-based “new media” era of the early 1990s, one industry pundit seriously purposed writing a translator’s phrase book between the various new media camps that evolved from the fields of software development, book/magazine publishing and the entertainment industry. Among the questions was what to call the person leading the “creative” effort: project manager, creative director, producer, etc. Sound familiar?

Likewise, the term “information architect,” came of life during the creation of another new industry that involved the convergence of several older fields. This was largely as a result of a meme appearing at the right place at the right time—namely Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville’s landmark “Information Architecture for the World Wide Web” (widely known as the “Polar Bear book” for its cover). Rosenfeld has since acknowledged he and Morville adopted the term “because few, if any, would hire librarians to consult on the design of their sites.” And in practice, the term became stretched into a useful, strategically-vague umbrella for people doing a variety of multi-disciplinary things.

So it’s time to look beyond job titles and see what ties together our community in terms of common goals, methods, issues and approaches. Because there is a common community “somewhere between the wide open spaces of experience design (everything from sniffomatics to amusement parks) and the narrow land of thesauri,” as Christina Wodtke puts it.

The common thread
I’ve taken to calling this community of practices “I4” and “I-stuff,” as a working title that’s admittedly jargon, but free of historical and political baggage, and describes a community of practice with four disciplines as its center of gravity:

• (content) information architecture (also known as the Polar Bear IAs)
• interaction design
• information design (in the broad sense of information-focused publication design, in addition to its narrower definition of creating maps, charts and diagrams)
• (user) interface design

Why those four?

For starters, if you look at attempted definitions based on what we do (taken from AIGA Experience Design’s attempt to describe some of the roles we see in the field), you’ll see substantial overlap between “broad” IAs and interaction designers. And there are other similarities.

To oversimplify drastically, one of the common threads is a focus on structure:

• Information architects are concerned about the structure of content. Information designers are concerned about structuring visual presentation of the content.
• Interaction designers are concerned about the structure of the behavior. Interface designers are concerned about structuring visual presentation of the behavior.

In some ways, information architecture and interaction design are the “hidden skeleton,” complemented by information design and interface as the “visible skin.” Just as in the human body, both skeleton and skin are necessary, otherwise you end up with unpleasant results…

But going deeper, these four disciplines share common outlooks and common approaches—for example, a card sorting exercise can be used to help inform information architecture, interface design, and interaction design (and probably information design, but I’ve never explored that).

Intersecting and informing
Slightly further out from this core are content strategists/writers (remember them?) and graphic designers (although it would be better to talk about them as sensory designers to capture the full range of still graphics, motion graphics, audio and video that can be used).

While writers and designers may be concerned about structure (and this is an area where our disciplines have traditionally underestimated graphic design), both also are concerned with the style and tone of the content itself and of its presentation. As Mark Twain said, the difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug—and good writers and graphic designers are acutely aware of this.

Both writers and designers may sometimes (rightfully) accuse all four “I” disciplines of paying insufficient attention to form—and dare I say it—style. Style counts, and even if gurus of utilitarian usability are blind to it, the general public isn’t. This was strikingly illustrated in some recent usability testing with which I was involved when users spontaneously commented that the site’s design (what graphic designers would call an extremely “clean” design) made them think the site was easy to use—even if they actually had trouble finding things.

So writers and designers, drawing from their own established disciplines, have much to offer I4 in finding the appropriate balance between content, behavior and form that’s needed for success.

Ideally, all six of these disciplines share a user-focused approach—but “user-centered design” is a viewpoint, not a discipline. And, in fact, all six fields have countercurrents of a “vision-based” approach—no one asked for the Sony Walkman, Napster, or the internet itself, yet each has done extremely well, so presumably they fulfilled a need. (These countercurrents tend to be stronger in the case of graphic design and writing, since their concern with form can edge into style.)

It is entirely possible to do information architecture, interaction design, information design or interface design without considering users—just look around at the numerous bad sites and products that exist. Likewise, it’s also possible to do all of these without testing your design.

But, in the best of worlds:

• User researchers, inform all these disciplines, but are a bit further from the core for the reasons just described.
• Usability testing reality-checks all of these disciplines, but likewise is also a bit further from the core.

(Note: I want to make it clear that I’m referring just to usability-as-critique, since the term “usability professional” is also having problems with multiple meanings—it can mean someone who’s strictly a usability tester, be used as a synonym for user-centered design approaches, or used in the sense of usability engineering, which bears a strong resemble to broad IA.)

User research without implementation by one or more of the four “I” disciplines remains just a pile of interesting observations. Usability testing without the vision provided by one or more of the four “I” disciplines will keep plaintively asking, “Does it work?”

So we end up with four “core” disciplines—(content) information architecture, information design, interaction design and interface design, ringed by four disciplines that are somewhat further from the core—graphic/sensory design, content strategy/writing, user research, and usability, which interact with and inform I4.

Stepping back further from the core, there are a number of surrounding disciplines—including brand strategy, business strategy, software engineering, industrial design and architecture, library sciences—that are separate, but share some of the same concerns or have an effect on the “core” disciplines.

A shared milieu
Put together, I4 plus the four closely-related disciplines are among the key disciplines involved in “user experience”—whatever you want to call someone’s experience with the “front end” of a website or software. And realistically, websites and to lesser extent software, PDAs and wireless—are what the vast majority of us are working on. For lack of a better term, call it the “digital milieu,” and it’s another center of gravity.

It’s an important difference, since we don’t design theme park rides or airplane cockpits. It’s not an absolute difference, since our skills and viewpoints blur into print and industrial design (to name just two fields). And some of the most interesting work right now involves integrating experiences in digital space and physical space. But the people having discussions over “user experience” aren’t industrial designers, building architects or perfume designers. They’re us.

So what do we call ourselves? Currently, I’m not sure we can come up with a single title that encompasses all of I4.

I’ve argued elsewhere the need for a “user experience architect/designer” who takes a holistic approach to crafting all aspects of the experience people have when they interact with what we build. But that’s a larger role, similar to a creative director in graphic design, than that of I4.

If your focus is narrow, it’s pretty easy to match a title to a role—you’re an interaction designer or an information designer. But for those who typically do two or more of the I4, it makes for some unwieldy job titles. Depending on what industry you come from, there are often titles that get stretched to fill these new roles. So I doubt we’ll see agreement on what to call ourselves any time soon.

And that’s okay, as long as we realize we’re we share a set of distinct-but-related disciplines—which I’d argue are part of the larger field of “user experience.” After all, other broad-based fields tie together related disciplines. The “programming” field encompasses systems analysts, database administrators and network architects even though they do very different things. The “graphic design” profession includes those ranging from corporate identity designers, to packaging designers, to typographers. But what ties them together is that practitioners in each of these fields share some common outlooks and education (“computer science” or “graphic design,” respectively).

Likewise, we’re a community of practice with similarities in outlook and approach that far outweigh our differences. Maybe we’ll find a term for I4 that everyone is happy with, maybe we won’t. But the things we do will still tie us together.